Sunday, 15 September 2019

Emigration is not easy. Even if you have an EU passport or right to be in another country, just hopping on a plane isn't a good plan.

You need to find work, housing, adjust to a whole new society with different laws and conventions. If you are allowed to live and work somewhere, great, but often you won't be able to afford anything if not earning in the local currency. If you plan to move based on some skill or qualification, what do you need to do to get such and to have it recognised in the place you want to move to? Do you have a plan sorted out, and the details accounted for? Will you be allowed to job hunt in the country? Or will you have to do so from South Africa and then apply to go through? When will your family be able to join you, and will they at all?

How will you find work, do you have a curriculum vitae in the format preferred in the place you are going to? Do you mention things which would by law force them not to hire you due to anti-discrimination legislation there?

Do you understand the local language, or the local variation spoken there? Will the way you personally speak be clear and understood, there? Do you have clothing suitable to the local environment? Are your pets ready, and certified ready, to emigrate? What are your plans for getting any medication you may need? Have you got your medical records from your doctors? What are the rules on bringing your children and spouse? Have you budgeted and prepared for your child's schooling and care? What furniture and other effects will you be able to take with you? Which would be foolish to take with, based on local laws and customs? What are your plans for internet and cellular phone usage, and for getting your money out of the country legally? Do you need to open a bank account before leaving? Are you ready for the process of converting your driver's licence? What are your plans for getting out and making new friends (bear in mind, you take your current social support system for granted, you might need a friend quite urgently to do a favour at some point).

Do you have letters of recommendation attesting to your trustworthiness for potential employers, and in some cases, letters from former landlords to new landlords attesting you are a good tenant? Do you have police clearance, if necessary?

Will you be able to afford a car, and possible statutory insurance? Do you have the right plans in place to register to pay tax and financially emigrate? Have you started looking at a budget, and at converting your qualifications to work there? Have you spoken to someone in your field who made the move?

Will you be able to fill your own car with petroleum and keep your own place clean? Have you budgeted for things like rubbish removal fees?

If you think you might land up leaving South Africa, you can't just plan to jump on a plane. That is how you land up homeless with no support system, stranded in a foreign land.

You at least need to be on emigration footing, from having what you need to leave, to having a curriculum vitae prepared, qualifications valuable there, and a real plan.

Do you at least have unabridged computerised originals and apostilles (if needed for that country, or may be needed there in future) of each of your major certificates, e.g. birth, marriage, divorce order, death, adoption, etc? Have you checked that unabridged is enough and vault is not possibly required by the specific country? Have you applied to Home Affairs for retention of South African citizenship in case you land up naturalising in the country you want to move to? Bear in mind, if South Africa goes bankrupt, the state may not be able to print new certificates for you. Zimbabwe ran out of funds to print new passports for their citizens. Do you have your antenuptial contract ready to bring with? Do you have baptismal and other certificates which could affect whether some churches allow marriage in them, or children to attend their schools?

If you are an attorney or advocate, do you have originals and apostilles of each of your court orders admitting you to the profession you are in? Is your firm ready to shut down on short notice?

Whatever profession you are in, have you started the process to convert your qualifications to be accepted there? Whether industry tests or via organisations which validate academic achievements? Have you got your syllabus description for your degree from the university you attended?

For dual nationals, do you have your South African passport, which you need to enter or leave South Africa on? Is your foreign passport current (bear in mind it can take months to arrive)?

Do you have enough money offshore in foreign currency to afford an airline ticket and a stay in the place you are looking at going to, until you have an income? Is your LinkedIn up to date? Do you know how salaries are quoted, and how in demand your profession is?

For those staying, are you on emigration footing? For those leaving, have you thought the process through?

Monday, 8 July 2019

If you attack people for employing people, expect less and less-desirable jobs to exist, and for employees whose productivity would drive our economy's engine, to move elsewhere, and drive the engines of other economies.

A woman asks what to pay a gardener if she needs one, and what hours and conditions of employment are right. While some helpfully point out the legal requirements, and the going rates and practices in the area, the inevitable comment is posted, this time about food. The poster, a university educated black woman, insists that employers who don't serve their 'helper' lunch are essentially the devil.

Similar attacks are made on employers who allow their domestic worker (maid or gardener) to wear their work clothes outside of their place of employment (as though they were a toddler or pet the employer has a right to dress or prevent from wearing what the employee happens to want, outside of work), or who don't buy their child's nanny a steak dinner when going out, as though she were part of the family, in the sense of a 'one of the family' pet, rather than what they are, an employee, if I read the anti-employer Facebook posts' attitudes right.

I suspect that the dignity of unemployment is not preferred by such employees, to having a livelihood and the ability to feed their children. In fact, many employees who are given lunch at work, take it home to feed their children. Some would prefer payment in cash than in kind, after all, domestic workers are human beings, not beloved pets, often, they may prefer to buy their own food, for less or better quality or nutrition, in their financial planning goals.

A while back, a farmer was crucified by South Africans, in their nasty views of him, because he dared to let a woman of a different race take a ride in his livestock cage in the back of his pickup truck. Apparently, she had not only asked for a lift, but had preferred the fresh air due to her health at the time. The result is likely that less farmers will be prepared to give strangers lifts.

Most people of my generation, myself included, have no intention of ever hiring a domestic worker in South Africa. Why bother, when employers are treated as the devil, and already on probation, no matter what.

South Africa's government, and a highly misguided local Catholic Church, has compared some jobs, such as those which migrant labour travels hundreds of kilometres to perform, to slave labour. Minimum wages, have solved that problem quite effectively, as farmers have sold and emigrated, or switched to less labour intensive crops, causing South Africa to have to import food, and giving the workers involved the great and kind dignity of having no way to feed their families.

South Africans have two very distinct reputations in the workplace, those of expat South Africans, who are known as incredibly hard workers, and those of the average South African semi-skilled worker, and recent social grant paid for university graduate. The word 'entitlement' is often used by local employers wishing to find someone who will take the bull by the horns and work with enthusiasm.

Whenever a law firm advertises a job where an intern must have a car, or driver's licence, cries of racism, and attack after attack on the law firm commence. This despite the fact, that many black South Africans own cars, and that the job for a paid intern, a candidate attorney, in a law firm, usually involves serving documents on other law firms, filing them in time at court, and court appearances, etc. All of which require reliable and timeous transportation.

I have often pointed out that if all the firms who demanded candidates have cars were prevented from doing so, and thus could not afford the cost to firm of an intern, those competing for jobs where cars are provided by the firm would be competing against hundreds of more candidates for each job of that nature. Most firms which don't demand a candidate with a car, are situated in the centre of town, where no car is required by many such firms. Take away the jobs you see as bad, and the demand for jobs you see as good sky-rockets, and every candidate for an internship has to not only offer more to get the job, but is likely to get less in return.

Something similar happens when laws protecting tenants from rent increases are passed. It stops being as profitable to rent out property, and so many new developments never happen, and rent protected apartments seldom are maintained or kept up to standard by landlords.

Minimum wages, and hounding employers for paying less than sentiments prefer, usually just make it illegal or undesirable to hire the young, new graduates, and those needing to be upskilled. Candidate attorneys, for instance, are competing with legal secretaries and messengers and drivers for similar work, but messengers, legal secretaries and drivers don't need to be extensively upskilled to be of any value to a firm. Firms take into account the hassle of hiring someone into what they pay them. If you aren't worth the effort, you won't get the work.

In the legal industry, if interns wanted the industry to give them better pay and conditions on average, allowing more firms to afford hiring candidates, would mean less candidates compete for each job, forcing firms to offer more to get them. Instead, government has pumped out so many law graduates, that few get work in industry, and even fewer stay in industry longterm.

Any money paid for an employee is ultimately paid by the customer in the end of the day.

And yet, employees in South Africa so often have an entitlement attitude. The employer is almost seen as owing them reparations for the fact the employer has etched out a better living than the employee. South Africa officially has the worst labour relations in the world, ranking 137th of 137 countries surveyed.

Employers are seen as the bad guy in South Africa. Extensive labour laws, and a conciliation process which are designed to force employers to bend the knee, make hiring any potential new talent a massive risk. South African youth often complain that all the jobs advertised demand years of experience, while they are just out of university or high school. They usually have to get work with jobs not advertised, which nonetheless see many people competing for them. Make it easier to fire an employee, and it is easier for that employee to find another job when fired or retrenched, because employers will take more risk. Make it easier to fire an employee, and you don't need them vetted by past employers, as extensively, to reduce risk. South Africa has such terrible youth unemployment, as it is such a risk to take a chance on an untried youth.

While vaunted by the government, black economic empowerment has also bled the economy dry. Why would whites, who often have the savings, build or expand a firm, if they have to give large portions of it away? How to compete with the international market, when it is illegal to hire the best person for the job? In skilled industries, important jobs just go vacant. South Africa's skilled and university educated population does not adhere to the demographics of the population as a whole, leaving skilled employees who would work hard for a job, locally, unemployed, and employers unable to find workers they can legally hire. Government literally threatening for example UCT with having its accreditation for its LLB (law degree) taken away if it did not pass more black students, and a university industry which does its best to pass the right number of graduates of the right demographics, will not solve this, as making university easier to pass, or easier to pass for some races and not others, negates the value of a university degree as something difficult to get. Students who went to top private schools, are still likely to outcompete students who have government education, if what union controlled government schools do can be called education.

The Pareto Principle and Price's law indicate that a very small portion of a population will always be the most productive. It is why retrenchments at a firm often cause a death spiral. Employees who are worth something, leave, leaving the less productive co-workers behind. There are fascinating graphs showing the South African economy and emigration from South Africa, and the dramatic loss of productivity as the young and skilled take skills they can't use locally, to foreign shores. Why live and work in a country, where your skin colour hurts your future? And why stay in a country, where the economy is going down, because many of the best skilled, and most educated are leaving, and causing the country's economy, which is always something which is based on productivity, to lose steam?

The upcoming expat tax, for another example of South Africa's bizarre treatment of productive people, is likely to cause many South Africans who are testing the waters overseas, to pay the price and financially emigrate, meaning it would be expensive for many of them to return for the five years following that, without paying the South African government quite a bit for a failed financial emigration, thus keeping even more productivity out of the economy.

South Africans overseas, in contrast, have a much vaunted reputation for being hard workers, and highly capable. Why not, though? These are people happy to just have a decent job at decent pay, where they felt they had no or a far lesser future in South Africa. They are also often raised under a capitalist mindset, contrasting the Marxist theories of exploitation that are so pervasive in South Africa, itself.

As long as employers are presumed guilty until proven innocent, and are treated as potential bad guys off the bat, South Africa will continue to lose both its best potential employers, and many of those employees who want to be judged on the merit of their productivity, and how well they personally do their job, to places who value both.

Nothing in this essay constitutes, or in any way should be relied upon as, legal advice. For that, make an appointment with your attorney, disclosing all the nuances of your specific matter to them.

Wednesday, 12 June 2019

Lawyers are document specialists. If your curriculum vitae is not perfect, you will struggle to get a job at a law firm. A CV isn't an afterthought. It is the thrust of your attempt at employment.

When I was looking for my first job as a candidate attorney, I spent two or three months perfecting my CV, carefully looking for any spelling error, or weakness in the flow or content of my writing, and the formatting of the document. A CV to a law firm should display mastery of written English wording, effective communication, and perfect grammar. Those are your primary tools as an attorney.

I then got out a copy of Horters, and carefully emailed the directors of many firms in my area. Secretaries in law firms often throw the CVs of candidates for jobs, who walk in, in the bin, and delete those sent to them via email. Sending your CV to a secretary is thus usually a bad idea.

Your letter of motivation is likely your most important part of your CV as a new law graduate. You should make a firm want to scoop you up as an asset to them, though by showing, not telling. Listing your subjects later in your CV, (but without your marks,) can also show them you are worthwhile. Unless they are asked for, don't attach transcripts or scans of your ID and degrees. Say they are available on request.

My email had a heading stating what job I was looking for, the email explained a bit about me and my desire for a job at their firm, and then referred to the attached PDF with my letter of motivation, CV and two letters of recommendation inside of it.

I asked that if theirs was not the desk that dealt with human resources that the email be forwarded to that desk. I sent to about a dozen firms a day, until I got interviews at a few firms. Don't CC a hundred firms in your emails, send to each individually. Also, send from a professional email address.

I still got replies to my CV to be a candidate attorney, years later, when I had already qualified and been admitted as an attorney.

Saying a CV is not important, is like saying your particulars of claim or plea are not important. Your documents need to be perfect long before you argue at trial, and your CV must be top notch, so that when it gets you interviews, you are entering an interview, having already made a good impression with your accuracy and good form in document creation.

Advocates may specialise in arguing on court. Attorneys are primarily about the paperwork. If your paperwork, in the form of your application to a firm for a job, is lacking, you have missed your first opportunity to show that you have the skills to do the primary job of an attorney.

Would you rather receive a professional, polite, nicely emailed application from a candidate for a job you need done, or would you rather have a sweaty graduate, in casual wear, walk into your firm, hand your secretary a scrubby, badly drafted document, and say they demand a job? Or, worse, demand to speak to you, taking you away from your work and clients, to demand a job? There is a reason people often prefer email to phone calls, it allows them to go over what is said to them, such as why you would be an asset to their firm, at their own pace, and in comfort. Seeking a job at a law firm is best done by email.

If you want a job in law, foremost is your documentation, in getting one. Email a good CV out to a lot of firms. If you aren't getting replies, then you really do need to spend a few months perfecting your CV.

Saturday, 8 June 2019

Have you ever truly wondered who you are, what thoughts are yours, and what is just parroted from others, friends, family, culture.

We are told to ignore our internal critic, the voices of doubt within our own minds. Yet, if we do that merely because others tell us to, we aren't thinking much at all. But what is thinking, really, truly?

I will often sit in my home office, alone, in the dark. I sit here, white noise, or calming music on, and I let my mind wonder. The same can be done in the early hours of the morning before the world awakens or late at night. Solitary, with this entity that is me.

At first, I hear nothing in my thoughts. I am silent, still waves upon an ocean. But dive with the whales and the sharks. Go deeper in, and the stillness on the surface is illusory. Currents and rip tides pull back and forth. It is so noisy, every straining worry rushing within my head, I cannot hear a thing in this deafening cacophony of competing thoughts, concerns.

Like a Great White Shark, the doubts and fears eat into me, but I do not put them out of mind. I sink deeper still. I hear them, I lend my ear to them, to my many concerns. I let myself sink deeper, still. I look with more depth, a deep dive into fear, anguish, concern. I let my mind make its painting of the future. I let my fears flow through me. I let my hopes touch upon the sword of the night, and swim towards the pieces which still remain after the fears and concerns have fed upon a frenzy.

I sink deeper still, and I look at my thoughts in depth, both fears and hopes under the microscope.

I sometimes surprise myself in conversation, whether with my own internal voice or with other people. I will say something I did not know I believed, but upon tearing it apart, I realise I really do believe it, it makes sense to me. It is easy but pointless to deny such nuanced thoughts are the real me, and I find, often, upon expressing them, they make more sense than more defensible positions, and they convince even me.

A defence mechanism of human beings is to truly believe our motives are more noble or more 'rational' than they truly are. A wise man however will not hide from the darker thoughts and resentments within. These are not overcome by suppression, and nor are our fears. We hide who we truly are, even from ourselves, for fear that the true us would become a prey item, or be chased from the village with spears, as a predator. But, however often we vocalise our false narrative within our cranium, the true us knows what we truly believe, and we would become aware of far too many more truths if we listened to it, to truly be able to risk ignoring what we actually, deep down, think.

When I have doubts, I listen, because it is me who is speaking. I softly float upon my doubts and interrogate their substance. I do the same with my hopes, I expose them to the light of my critical internal eye. I discover who I truly am, by observing myself. By seeing my behaviour, how I act, who I am in the wild, and in past scenarios. No matter how noble I may present myself to myself to be, I look at my past and the record within that, and unless something has truly changed since then, I expect I know what I really aim for in life, and oddly enough, my real motivations, what I truly hope for and fear, are far more convincing to myself and others than the noble lie my mind may otherwise make up within me.

As for those thoughts I gain from others, I can look back in my own life to see the terrible destruction many of these have wrought upon me. Ideals and oversimplified lies of the land are not often beneficial. Other thoughts of others, however, I have tested and found true. But we cannot blindly accept the thoughts we think are ours. Most are not original to us. So often I have made a deep and witty observation in my mind, only to hear someone else make it just a few minutes later. Clearly, it is not me who originated that thought, but something else, culture, perhaps. A widely read mind, or one which hears many diverse worldviews, is more likely to hold unique thoughts, as compared one with little exposure, which accepts mere opinions as fact.

I continue to sink into my thoughts, and to softly interrogate them, for the concerns which are truly mine, and upon those, I meditate and pray to my God, and also - to my own subconscious, probing and inquisitive questions, I ask, and find that thoughts emerge within me which I can interrogate. Because I know that the real me is far deeper than the voice and images I produce within my mind. The real me is hidden from me, and it is that which the conscious me desires to truly know and communicate with, and it is that me that is really in charge of my life, and which, in communication with the part I type with now, with that, it often surfaces the thoughts of my mind, and, I interrogate those thoughts, I weigh them, against truth, and the nature of my soul, of my blueprint, as I have observed myself in the history of my own memories, and the recollection of my mind, even that which is less certain, less clear, for that memory which is only subconscious.

And into this, I calmly sink. For who I am is not the vocalisation in my head, that vanity is a product of an over-busy modernity. The true you is a stranger, whom you have a lifetime to interact with and to get to know. But as long as you think you know yourself, you will never set aside the time you need to, to truly build and know your soul.

Tuesday, 26 March 2019

What a lot of legal professionals might not yet understand is that tertiary industries like ours rely heavily on the primary and secondary sectors of the economy to survive. The primary sector is on life support and every day more likely to collapse. The secondary sector of the economy relies upon the primary sector of the economy to survive. The tertiary sector relies on both.

Over the last few years, running a law firm has become more expensive, and, as an industry, our services have often become more of a grudge purchase for clients, a necessary luxury fewer can afford. Many lawyers don't increase their fees with inflation anymore, knowing their clients just can't afford to pay more. But the collapse of each sector becomes more likely as each month fades into the next.

Eskom is keeping the lights on the same way many of you do when the lights go off, with diesel. A lot of us rely on government, whether deeds or masters' offices or courts for much of our livelihood. These rely on some degree of regular power supply.

Then there is the Legal Practice Act which might be regulating industry to death. The plan has also been announced by the powers that be to change the mandate of the Reserve Bank so it can print more money, affecting supply of cash in an economy without enough demand, thus causing further inflation, what Ayn Rand called theft (of citizens' income and savings) by remote control. The state, also, has plans to introduce prescribed assets, forcing pension funds to effectively make loans to it and SOEs which no one else will make. South Africa's government is three trillion in debt and is borrowing two billion rand a day to keep the cogs of state machinery turning. The sands of the hour glass are running ever faster out.

Whether our electricity prices which are at twice international norms, breaking infrastructure, taxation well beyond the Laffer curve, on the verge of collapse water treatment, industry, or the economy itself, something is likely to give. South Africa has the worst in-out investment ratio of any non-tax-haven. South Africans, per the statistics, are moving everything they can offshore, while foreigners just aren't investing in the economy.

Surveys and statistics, as well as anecdotal evidence all find our professional class is leaving our shores. Doctors say they will not stay if NHI passes, but the state continues on with it, and so many are leaving anyway, taking their essential skills with them. A lot of the attorneys I know are leaving, they just haven't announced it officially yet. Many top law firm partners and directors, and advocates are getting jobs as legal secretaries and paralegals overseas. Engineers, per media reports, are leaving the country, due to threats at gunpoint by RET forums at construction sites.

Both Price's Law and the Pareto Principle teach us, from economics, that a tiny proportion of people produce most of what is created in an economy. The ratio is incredibly skewed, with so few hyper-productive individuals creating most of a nation's wealth. This is reflected especially starkly in South Africa where just a few hundred thousand taxpayers pay the vast majority of the tax revenue of the country. When an economy hits an iceberg, those who have means are the first to put on their life jackets and jump to somewhere safer.

A disproportionate percentage of South Africans are employed by the state, and so many survive off of social grants. Yet more survive due to doing business with the state, its employees, and with recipients of social grants. As the private sector loses its most productive citizens, its revenue shrinks, and so does collectable tax. South Africa is so far beyond the Laffer curve, that any further taxation will just shrink tax revenue. As the state's debt and responsibilities continue to increase, the bedrock of private industry it sustains itself upon is heaving under a weight which could soon collapse it.

South Africans as a people have always been robust, and its attorneys have been as well.

Those of us still in the industry are still making enough to make our careers worthwhile.

However, we are sitting on a national timebomb, or rather are within a grid of dozens of bombs. Which will go off first is uncertain, but any one could set off the rest.

Your three to five year plan should probably be open to the possibility of getting your affairs in order, saving up, updating your CV, and considering closing up shop and emigrating to more certain climes, if need be.

Tuesday, 13 November 2018

Registering an Ante-Nuptial Contract with the Johannesburg Deeds Office

A client has appeared before you, a notary public. You drafted an ante nuptial contract, which they and their spouse-to-be, and two witnesses signed in front of you; they, you, and the witnesses, initialling the bottom right of each page in black ink, and all signing in the right spot on the last page. You signed, your signature appearing in a spot: below Quod Attestor and above Before me Notary Public, and placed your stamp by it, as well.

As you already have an account with the Deeds Office, having climbed up to the 26th floor of Marble Towers, and given in the requisite documents and forms to finance, and having gone through to data collection for them to record your signature and details as a notary, I will not note that process in this piece.

You opened your protocol register (a rather expensive book which can be bought at some Waltons stores, and other stores online or elsewhere) and filled out the number of the deed, the date of your clients signing it before you, that it was an ANC, the names of the parties, and then other details you deem pertinent, under comments, and then you stored all important documents in your protocol (likely a lever arch file with non-leaching plastic flip folder style pre-punched paper sheaths in it, so no important document gets punched), which is locked away safely, along with your protocol register. The deed number in your protocol register, either starting from 1 each year or from 1 in total, corresponds to the protocol number you then enter on the ANC itself.

When the registered ANC is back from the deeds office, the first signed original is what you still keep in the protocol register, this and not the registered ANC is deemed the original. In fact, it is a signed copy of the original and not the original itself which is to be lodged at the deeds office.

It is time to lodge and register your client's ANC with the Deeds Office, on the 26th floor of Marble Towers.

Before you jump in your car, and drive to the centre of town, you need to do a few other things first. You need to get a green cover for your ANC to be placed in. On the top left corner you should have your firm name and number, and a telephone number, or your firm stamp. The rest of the front and back sides of the cover should have standard required fields and typing on them, at the right places. You should be able to buy a hundred customized green covers from specialist stationers for about five hundred rand, including delivery.

Fill out your reference number, so they know what to put in any communications to you for that ANC. By code, next to 1, say H, and put the name of the first party, a forward slash, and the name of the second party, under name of parties, under firm number, put your firm number as assigned by the Deeds Office (and emailed to you by them) when you set up your account, and under batch, say 1. Under linking, in both boxes say 1. ANCs never tend to need linking.

On the front of your ANC itself, staple on a blank sheet of A4 paper, and put your firm number on the top left of this.

You will then need to put your ANC into its own green cover.

Your cover still needs a barcode, so the deeds office can charge you for the whole thing. You need to bring with a signed letter on your firm's letterhead, signed by a director, partner, or sole proprietor of your firm. Its heading should be along the lines of 'Representatives to apply for and collect barcodes at deeds office'. The signatory should set out who they are, and their position in the firm, and state that they authorise a specific person, stating that person's full names per their government issued Identity Document and Identity Number and that they specifically authorise them to apply for and collect barcodes from the deeds office. This should be handed in at the office where barcodes are allocated, and the representative doing so must present their government issued Identity Document when collecting such. You will probably get at least a sheet with a few dozen barcodes on it. You will need to sign, and they will record which barcodes have been given to you. You don't pay anything for barcodes until they have been used for registering a document.

You place the first barcode in the set on the bottom right of the front end of your filled out green cover. For notarial work you are unlikely to need to write anything on the back cover, which should merely have the standard writing etc on it. Nothing is written on the cover on its inside, where the ANC will be placed.

Take the cover, ANC within, to the lodgement counter. They will take the cover, ANC inside, and stamp it, enter it in their system, and take it from you.

Within about 5 business days from then, if all goes well, the deed will have gone through two examiners, and be placed in your pigeon hole, having been placed into prep. You can do a deeds office tracking at the same place you got the barcodes for about R 13.00, to see where your ANC is in the process. You will need to know what the barcode number is.

Once your ANC has entered prep, it is vital you execute it within 5 days of it entering prep. So, take it to the preparation desk, and ask for permission to execute the deed there, handing it over. Otherwise, the deed will lapse and won't be registered. They will not allow you to execute on the same day as asking to execute, unless there are some special circumstances and permission granted to you. It can be a good idea to set it down for execution for the next working day.

On the execution day, sometime before 10h30, you go in, go up to floor 26 in Marble Towers, as always, and go through to preparation to get your ANC, they having authorised your execution for that day. You then go through to a small computer, where you take out your pen and fill in the date next to date on the green cover, and sign to the right of that. They scan the barcode on the ANC, and take it from you.

Within about 2 days, it may be scanned in. Within 5 working days of your executing it, if you go in, and go to the distribution desk and ask if there is anything for firm (your firm number), they should be able to give you your ANC, which they will have stapled into its cover.

Take the ANC, bring it back to your office. Scan it in for your client after you undo the staple that holds it in its cover. A notary must keep an original of every deed executed before him, in his protocol. However, practice here seems to differ at times. It is the signed original which the notary is to keep in his protocol, the registered copy from the deeds office can be given to the client.

The cover will have stamps for lodgement, execution, for each of the two examiners and their groups, its scan, and a dated stamp from the registrar of deeds on the front. On the back there may be a stamp saying 'Final Black Book' and a date.

Inside, the ANC will have a stamp stating the fee the deeds office charged you (likely R319.00), a stamp saying 'registered' with a signature and a date, and a stamp with an H and Johannesburg on it, and the H number of the year (e.g. 111111/2018) on it. Your A4 sheet should also be in the cover, likely at the back.

You will later need to pay the deeds office for each ANC you register there with them.

For the clients, a letter to be handed to their marriage officer will need to be drafted before they wed, which can be any time after they sign the ANC before you as notary.

If something is wrong or right, the best way to find out is by going into the deeds office, and checking your pigeon hole and doing deeds office tracking. You don't tend to find out how things are going with your matter otherwise.

Nothing in this piece should be relied upon as legal advice. For that, make an appointment with your attorney.

Thursday, 1 November 2018

Cause and Effect, an illogical idea, at the beginning of the universe
Poem by Marc Evan Aupiais

Tick Tock. The clock did stop.
Cause. Effect. Until the start.
A big bang, or a tiny grain of sand.
It matters not.

Go far enough back, there must always be a cause.
Something, a start, to continue to, dominoes, cause and effect.
But take infinity, call it X.
What happened before X.
What was the first cause of effect.
For something must have caused it too,
But nothing can have, there must be a first,
And this is it.

What is logic? Cause and effect.
To be logical, the foundation must be firm, it must be sound,
And that foundation must cause an effect, the specific effect, it must follow.

And yet, the entire universe is a non sequitur. It does not follow.
And neither science: cause and effect, can explain an effect without a cause,
And nor can magic: for magic is mechanical in its thinking, the precursor to science, it believed that one act, whether ritual or effective, certainly would cause another.

And whether a big bang, steady state, multiverse, or ever repeating loop, something must have brought it into being. A first knock upon the movement, the cause and effect we call time, for without energy, entropy would break the clock, even one in a circular loop. Without some outside cause for its effect, some source, all movement would stop.

What else is left? For time is cause and effect?
But then something not bound by time, must have had an effect. For, what caused X, what caused the first slight or great movement of time? The clock stops, for by its logic we know not its cause, the cause of logic, or time, of before and after, of cause and effect.

Either that, or logic, the patterns we observe as absolute, is neither universal, nor much but a precursor, like magic.
For the very first cause, logically, could not be an effect.